starfishstar

Okay, favorite books from this most recent quarter year, in roughly one sentence each, go…

 

TOP BOOKS 

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik – I love it when an author takes the already excellent worldbuilding from their first book, and uses the second book in the series to unfold it further outward in unexpected yet inevitable directions; in other words, Naomi Novik continues to write at the top of her game.

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A gentle and lovely elegy to her father.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel – Like probably pretty much everyone else, I saw this and thought, Alison Bechdel wrote a book…about fitness…? But because it’s Alison Bechdel, fitness is a lens through which to examine the human condition, her struggle for utter self-sufficiency, and her gradual – and still ongoing – capitulation to the idea that not all interdependence with fellow human beings is a bad thing.

Shirley and Jamila’s Big Fall by Gillian Goerz – This sequel to Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer continues to be a wonderful kids’ mystery/adventure, a modern-day, kid-scaled Sherlock Holmes retelling, but very much stands on its own with a core theme of friendship and what it means to be a good friend.

A Stranger at Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton – Sequel to Fatty Legs, and I thought this one was even better – here Olemaun, an Inuvialuit girl, returns home from her terrible experience at Catholic boarding school and has to struggle with no longer quite belonging in either world.

 

( more books here! )

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Dear Chocolatier,

Hello! It's my first time participating in Chocolate Box and I'm looking forward to it! Some of my general notes here are things I'm copying over from past Yuletides, so hopefully this will work out all right. :-)


General notes: I’m starfishstar on AO3, DW and LJ. I’m easy to please! If you write a story about any of these characters, out of love for these characters, I’m going to be delighted with it.

DNW: major character death; graphic violence; PWP; A/B/O; unremitting angst... I think that's about it, really!

Likes: A focus on character interactions, be that friendship or romance or family. Found family dynamics. Humor and banter. UST (all the UST) as long as it resolves by the end. Happy or hopeful endings (angst and complexity are fine – I like stories that are realistic! – but I do need at least a degree of hope).

(Additional note: I signed up for Chocolate Box quite late, after nominations were closed, so I didn't get to nominate anything, just worked from what was already in the tagset. Which doesn't mean I'm ANY less excited about any of this! Just explains why I'll sometimes refer to things I found in the tagset as though they appeared there fully formed, without my having had any hand in what got nominated for these fandoms... Because I didn't.)  ;)

Fandoms:

Here are some thoughts only if you want them; I'm easygoing and enjoy lots of things, so you're welcome to go in your own direction as well!


( Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries )


( Graceling Realm Series )


( The Scholomance )


(  Welcome to Night Vale )


( White Collar )


Phew! I think that's it! I was not (and am never...) able to be succinct, so take or leave whatever you like from that. :-)

Thank you for creating something for me!
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Fic I posted in 2021:


( WRITING IN 2021! )


All in all, wow, it was a much better writing year than I realized. Also...a much, much longer year than I realized.
 

Ha. Yeah, I guess life has indeed been so hard (see note below) that it's now November and I still have sitting here a nearly complete draft of my write-up about the books I read in the second quarter of this year. As in, books I read from April to June. And now it's November. (This write-up was already very belated even when I first wrote it, sometime over the summer, and then things got even harder and I never had a chance to come back to finish it.)

So I'll just share this as it is, with my thoughts mostly complete. Not sure whether I'll do posts for the third (long since fled) and fourth (racing toward its close) quarters of this year. I was thinking I was going to come here and say that I'm probably going to have to stop writing these quarterly round-ups entirely – but rereading this one reminded me how much I enjoy doing these! So, we'll see. Maybe I'll do a very abbreviated list of just top favorites, of the 3rd & 4th quarters squished together, at the end of the year?

Dunno... Anyway, here's what I wrote for the second quarter of 2021:

 

( favorite books from April to June! )

 

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THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARB UNCLE

Fandom: Underholdningsavdelingen (NRK / Norwegian TV) “Oklahomo” Sherlock parody

Summary: Holmes and Watson take a case that involves a goose, a hat and the colour blue. Or at least one of those things.

Characters: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

Words: 800

Notes: A Holmestice treat for deelaundry. [How excited was I that someone finally requested this wonderfully silly fandom for Holmestice!!]

Read on AO3, or here below:


( The Adventure of the Blue Carb Uncle )

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Fandom: Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik

Summary: “Miryem,” my grandmother said, calling me to her. “I think you may be able to help this man.”

Characters: Miryem Mandelstam, Miryem's grandmother, other characters, other goblins

Notes: Purimgifts 2021, for chestnut_pod.

Read on AO3, or here below:

 

( Miryem and the Purim Goblins )

Ha, well, apparently April was the sort of month where I didn't manage even to think about writing up my reading from the first quarter of the year (January–March) until now in...May. Yeah. But here we go! 


VERY TOP BOOKS

We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez – Damn, this book hits hard and real. It was impossible to decide which of my three "very top books" from this quarter should be listed first; frankly, they all deserve to be first! But I'm putting this one at the top, because I think its very human message is going to stay with me for a long time. It's about three teenagers who flee their home in Guatemala when dangerous circumstances become untenable ones. The book follows them through the long, arduous journey across Mexico (a part of the migrant journey I knew NOTHING about) and then the perilous crossing of the U.S. border. It's a tough read, but an important one, and more than that a good one. It's a fantastic portrayal of tight-knit friendship. The author absolutely succeeded at what she clearly set out to do: put a human face to a catastrophe that's mostly talked about in sweeping terms and statistics. (Similar to how I felt about When Stars Are Scattered, which similarly put a human face to the too-massive-to-comprehend crisis of life in refugee camps.) Talking about all this heavy stuff is probably not a great way to sell anyone on why they should read this book, but it's really good. And maybe essential reading for anyone in North America. (Oh, and I highly recommend the audiobook! Getting to hear the accents and the correct pronunciations of all the foods and such added such richness. Mm, now I'm very curious about Guatemalan food...)

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas – I mean. Surely it was clear by now that everything Angie Thomas does is amazing! I loved this empathetic portrayal of a teenage boy trying so hard to do right by the responsibilities that are piling and piling up on him, despite pretty much everything being stacked against him. For much of this book I found myself saying over and over, "Oh, kiddo. Oh, kiddo." Because yes, Maverick makes a bunch of bad decisions along with the good ones, but given everything he's up against, the logic of those decisions is so relatable. And yet, because it's Angie Thomas, the story is beautiful and compelling too! I also really appreciated how firmly this book pushed back on racist stereotypes about Black men as absentee fathers. All the fathers in this book are incredibly present, fiercely looking out for their kids – yes, even in the case of the dad who's having to do his parenting from prison. I found myself having to excavate and examine some prejudices I still hold, even though I'd like to think I don't, and I'm grateful for it.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor – This book, too, deserves to be listed at the very top of the top three. Obviously! I think it's only down this far because this time around it was a reread. Or a reread of a reread? I've lost track... I was finally able to pick back up my big read of the entire Logan Family series, after I tracked down one errant book that the pandemic had made inaccessible to me, so stay tuned for more of the Logan family! Mildred D. Taylor is masterful. She's one of those writers (like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) where I find myself thinking, how do they do that? Even when they're writing about mundane things, it's so compelling. And the non-mundane things, of course, are even more compelling.


( so many more good books here... )
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I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo! Yes, at long last, I've officially signed up for a NaNoWriMo event. Let's see if I immediately regret this as soon as April arrives...which technically is in a few minutes... No, I don't think I'll regret it. :-)

For years, I've wanted to do proper actual NaNoWriMo (meaning, the full 50k deal, in November) but my life is never in a place where it seems possible. And as for Camp NaNoWriMo (which happens in April and July, and can be for smaller word goals) apparently each time I either forget, or I don't know what else. So this year, I put a note into my calendar to remind me to look into Camp NaNo before April. ...Unfortunately, where I put that note in my calendar was on March 30, which didn't exactly give me a lot of lead time to ponder my options and get to know the platform and everything. But I did it! I signed up!

My goal for this April is 15,000 words – a very modest goal. (It's literally where I started the very first time I set a month word count goal – in January 2017 – and then I spent the next years working up to gradually higher word counts each time I did that sort of thing again. (Jan 2017: 15,500 words, April 2017: 20,000 words, Nov 2018: 20K/nearly met my stretch goal of 30K, Nov 2018: 10K/met my stretch goal of about 14K despite my life having imploded shortly beforehand. But life has continued to be sort of implode-y ever since, so I'm very okay with a modest goal this time around.)

As for what specific project I'll be working on... I've been gradually working my way back into the world of writing, after having had to grind everything to a halt in favor of finishing my dissertation last year. So, last summer first I did a very small-scale flash fiction month. Then I haltingly lurched my way somewhat back into fic, thanks entirely to the fests whose deadlines forced me to write (Torchwood Fest, HP Halloween, Yuletide, Holmestice, Purimgifts). Then, since the start of the year, I've been doing a bunch of online workshops (I've had a writing workshop every single Wednesday since the start of January, plus a bunch on various Thursdays as well...) and have used that as an opportunity to focus on original fiction and generate some new ideas for the first time in a long while.

I'm a little burned out on constant workshops, though, so I figured April and Camp NaNo are the perfect chance to make myself focus in on one longer project, rather than jumping around so much. I'm gonna unearth one of those "maybe it's a novel or something?" ideas that I've had lurking for several years now, dancing around it and talking about it and playing with bits of it in workshop exercises, but never quite feeling like I had the time to commit to it fully. So, as of tomorrow, I'll start writing stuff and see what happens.

Wish me luck!

How many books read in 2020?

97 books

...Yes, this is the first time since (*checks records*) 2015 that I read fewer than 100 books in a year. I don’t even know exactly why this year had a drop-off; yes, 2020 was hard, but for me 2019 was way, way, way harder. I think partly it may be that I’ve been working on being less obsessive about, well, everything, so that seems to have managed to spill over into not being quite as absurd about my MUST READ ALL THESE BOOKS impulses. That’s my plan for 2021, in fact – to try to hardly be obsessive about it at all. :-)

(BTW, it was ADORABLE looking back at my end-of-year books post from 2015 and seeing that I was impressed with myself for having read a whole 79 books that year, and that I thought reading 6–7 books a month was a lot. Ha ha ha, awww. *laughs indulgently at my naïve baby self who had not yet become obsessive about expanding and tracking my reading*)


( lots of thoughts and books and recs! )
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Hello! This is my first time signing up for Purimgifts, I am VERY EXCITED, and I'm looking forward to reading/hearing/seeing whatever you create. :-) Here are some thoughts if you want 'em:


General notes: I’m starfishstar on AO3, DW and LJ, if you want to look me up in any of those places. Oh, and I'm new to Purimgifts and I'm not totally sure how the podficcing aspect works, but if you want to podfic anything of mine, you certainly have blanket permission!

Likes: A focus on character interactions, be that friendship or romance or family. Found family dynamics. Humor and banter. UST (all the UST) as long as it resolves by the end. Happy or hopeful endings (angst and complexity are fine – I like stories that are realistic! – but I do look for for at least a degree of hope). I'm equally fond of genfic and of pairings (F/F, M/M, M/F, it's all good with me.) Especially for this exchange, feel free to lean as hard as you want in the silly/goofy/fun/romp/parody/humor direction – it's Purim, after all!

DNW: Just the big ones that I've already tagged in my sign-ups (Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con).

Judaism: I’m Jewish (not observant or even particularly practicing much of the time, but it's an extremely important part of my cultural/family identity) and I was so delighted when I stumbled across this fest, a joyful fic exchange based around a joyful Jewish holiday. You're certainly not required to write Jewish content into your pod/fics, but if it's something you want to and feel able to do, I'll be super-extra-especially-delighted. :-)


FANDOMS:


( Call Me By Your Name, All-of-a-Kind Family, Hamster Princess, Fleabag, Graceling Realm, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Hereville, Harry Potter )
  
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